Biology Commons^™

A Genetic Analysis Of Variation For The Ability To Fly After Exposure Tothermal Stress In Drosophila Mojavensis, Robert A. Krebs, Kimberly A. Thompson

Biological, Geological, and Environmental Faculty Publications

To help us understand how adaptive tolerance to heat stress has evolved, we made F₁ hybrid crosses and backcrosses amongst populations of Drosophila mojavensis, and tested their ability to fly after exposure to a debilitating, but non-lethal, heat stress. Previous work identified that these populations vary in thermotolerance as measured for a variety of traits. Hybrid superiority was observed when crossing all four pairs of strains. Patterns of inheritance in flight ability after stress varied depending on which strains were used to set up complete reciprocal backcrosses, and, for both population pairs, results supported a multigenic model. This …